


Five Things That Never Happened To the Umbrella Academy

by feverbeats



Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, F/M, Gen, M/M, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-26 02:03:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19758346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverbeats/pseuds/feverbeats
Summary: Five AUs, in the classic style! Got some evil siblings, some time loops, some sex, some trans characters, and some music.





	Five Things That Never Happened To the Umbrella Academy

**Author's Note:**

> Complete warnings: Character death (off-page), sibling incest (canon and otherwise), mention of attempted suicide.
> 
> Section titles from songs by Bonnie Tyler, Elvis Costello, The Mountain Goats, and PATD. I listened to "Total Eclipse of the Heart" a LOT of times while writing this.

**lipstick and powder**

Allison looks so good in red. She sings like an angel, too, which Vanya would never have guessed. But she loves Allison, and she wants to show her off. This was meant to be something grander than a family band, but Vanya is picking up the pieces and making do with what she has. They may not be the Philharmonic, but as long as they're making music, Vanya is happy. She can still feel it reverberating through her ribcage when they play.

Sometimes she just wants to blend into the background, but every day she puts on her suit and picks up her violin. They're counting on her. Without her, there is no band.

The conductor only looks like a child. He also only looks like he's in charge. He tried the hardest to fight her, but Vanya is calling the shots now. She just needs someone who doesn't mind the spotlight.

Diego plays guitar. It was the only thing Vanya could find that would fit him. He plays it perfectly, though, because she says he will. He moves almost like a marionette when he plays, but he never misses a beat.

Luther is not musically inclined, but he's perfect for the drums. Vanya worried he'd hit them too hit (hit her too hard), but the first time he did something she didn't like, she made sure it would never happen again. Now she's confident. Now she's bright and beautiful.

Klaus plays bass, his fingers moving faster, junkie-quick. But he's not a junkie anymore. Vanya needs him to be sober. He'd been right when he said he just needed his choices to be taken away.

(There is another violin in the band, but he hardly ever plays loudly enough to be heard. He's the only one who won't do what she wants, and only Klaus can make him. He plays ghostly music that clashes with the rest, and he's the only thing slowing her down as she moves toward whats she wants.)

This is the new Orchestra Verdammten and Vanya is not letting her family quit.

**And giving off sparks**

"You're a freak!"

The words echo in Rumor's head for days. It's not the first time someone has said it to one of them, but she's older now, and she can't help but wonder, sometimes, if they're right.

Normal twenty-year-olds are out on their own, in college or getting jobs. Getting apartments. She and her siblings are still living at home, doing exactly what Dad asks them to.

But that's good, because of course they wouldn't be able to make it on their own. The Kraken and the Seance don't have the social skills. The Horror and the White Violin are too dangerous. Spaceboy is...well, a freak.

The Rumor doesn't look like a freak, but she knows she is. She can't go more than an hour without making little shifts in reality so it aligns with what she wants. The other six of them would be horrified to learn how many things they believe because she wanted it that way. So that's at least as bad as looking like a monster.

Yesterday she woke up and the Horror was gone again. According to Mom, he tried to jump off the roof in the night. He'll be back after a week or two in the hospital. Again. One of these days it's going to work.

Tonight, Rumor lets herself in, careful not to make too much noise. Her two hours of free time out of the house are over, and then some. The others are pretty good about sticking to their time limits, although she thinks the Kraken sneaks out at other times, too. He's writing to some girl, she knows that.

She thinks about going to her room, but she's still buzzing with energy, so she goes to see Spaceboy, instead.

He's awake. He's reading in bed, which he's started doing lately. He's shirtless, and she can see ever part of him that Dad has warped or enhanced.

When she comes in, he pulls the sheet over himself. "Sorry," he says.

"Don't be sorry," she says quietly. "You know I like how you are."

She sits on the edge of the bed and tugs the sheet off him, reaching out to touch his chest. He doesn't pull away, but he does turn the light off.

He's learned by now that she doesn't want him to be careful with her. She can be under him, with his whole weight bearing down, and still be in control. Nobody else can be in control of her, ever. The one thing she doesn't let him do is cover her mouth.

He groans as he pushes inside her, his huge, hairy body shuddering against hers. She spreads her legs and wraps one of them around him, digging her heel in.

"Space," she says, breathless and hot in his ear.

She doesn't let him pull out when he comes.

She falls asleep in his bed, even though it isn't allowed.

**baltimore, 2003**

_Baltimore, 2003_

High school sucks. This is the third school Ben has been at in two years, and the fifth foster home. Everybody looks at him weird or makes fun of him. He can't even cut his hair unless he asks his CPS worker. He doesn't own a single item of clothing that's not black, and nobody can make him change that.

He also has a secret. Not the one about how he's not planning to live through high school, but an even worse one. The two secrets are related.

He has a monster inside him. And when people are mean to him, it comes out.

_Manhattan, 2003_

Allison is sixteen and everything is changing. Not like it's supposed to--Or, no, exactly like it's supposed to, but not at all like she thought. Six months ago, she was a loser. She was a teenage boy with no friends, mediocre grades, and a shitty relationship with her mom.

Then she said something catty to a girl at school: _I heard a rumor that Ty is sleeping with your sister._

When it turned out to be true, she kept it up. She was miserable and she wanted to hurt people, so she kept doing it. Except eventually, it started to become clear that she was doing more than spreading rumors.

The next night, she tried it on herself, not expecting it to work. But it did.

And now everything has changed. Allison is a pretty girl with tons of friends and straight A's. Even her relationship with her mom is better, mostly as a result of the other changes. No one has called her out on it, not even her little sister, who usually knows everything that's going on with her. Not even her stepdad, who is great at catching her screwing up.

She walks through the halls of her school a princess, a queen. She feels like she's waiting for something, or everything is happening too fast and at the same time. Both things feel true.

_Sergiyev Posad, 2003_

There's another article in the paper today. The Umbrella Academy stopped another crime. Vanya clips it out carefully and and puts it on the bulletin board with the others. Mom will be proud of her for catching it, because it wasn't a headline. They often aren't, in the Russian papers.

She goes to complete her daily routine. She makes her breakfast, and her mother's. Then she practices. She practices for three hours after day, after each meal. Her control is very good now, the sounds of the city vibrating through her, pure and sharp. She could do almost anything. Mostly she waits.

As her mother says, one day she's going to have to fight the Umbrella Academy, when they become dangerous. And only Vanya will be able to stop them.

She has to be ready. She has to prepare.

_Battery City, 2003_

"You know Dad's going to freak out if we do this," Luther says. He's not putting down the file, though.

"I know," Two says calmly. "But that's only if we get caught."

"You do know there are cameras everywhere," Klaus says. "We are _definitely_ going to get caught."

Two grabs the file from Luther before he can try to put it back. "It'll be too late for Dad to go back on it, though. We know they're out there. We have a right to know our siblings."

Two is always the big talker, but Klaus was the one who convinced the others to go through the files. They knew they couldn't be the only ones, and now they know for sure. There are others, all over the world. And if Two has gotten as good as he claims at taking people with him when he teleports, they're going to find the others.

"I know you're nervous," Two tells Luther, "so you can pick who we find first."

Klaus is looking over Two's shoulder. "How about this gorgeous Asian kid?"

"How about not?" Luther says. He leafs through the file. "This one. Manhattan. That's not as far as some of the others."

_Mazatlán, 2003_

There is nothing special about Diego. He survived drowning once as a child, but that's not so special. His mother disagrees. Ever since then, and because of some circumstances she won't talk about surrounding his birth, she keeps telling him he has a destiny. So far he mostly has a destiny to get beat up because he cries a lot and has a stutter.

One day when he's leaving school, he's surprised to see a group of kids his age standing outside, staring at him.

"That's him," one of them says in English. "He's cute, too."

**build god**

There's a lot to think about, in the apocalypse. The books that haven't been burned are useful, and Five teaches himself everything he can. He learns several languages, even if Delores is the only person there to tell him how his accent is. He likes her. She reminds him of his mother.

Five keeps himself in shape, because he needs that to stay alive. He teachers himself history, geography, how to build an engine and how to fence. He teaches himself basic chemistry, and how to survive without enough food or water. All the things Dad tried to get him to learn, all the things he never saw the need to care about. It's a bitterly hard lesson to learn, that his father may have been right after all.

When the Commission offers him a job, he takes it, of course. He barely remembers how to talk to people, but they're not people. He spends the next few jobs shedding the last of his humanity and learning how to kill, the final lesson.

When he's finally good enough at traveling through time, he jumps backwards. He has to be early enough to make a difference, and he finally has an idea how.

October 1st, 1989. There are some babies he has to collect. Somebody has to form them into a team that can prevent the apocalypse, after all.

**bitter trace**

"It's time to go," One says. "Five found the others."

"The others?" Three asks. "You mean--"

"The ones like us," One says. "The other children. Hargreeves doesn't know how long Five has had them, but there are enough of them to cause us a problem. Let's just hope they're untrained."

Two has killed a lot of people, but he can't imagine killing these people who could have been them. Every time he's out of the house, it's more unbearable to go back. He looks at people on the street and thinks, _That could be me._ But it couldn't. He doesn't know how to make it be him. And if he ever left, if he ever betrayed the team, they would kill him.

That was Five's great crime. Coming back and breaking up the team. Two misses Seven, and he's angry at her, and he doesn't know if he can kill her. He doesn't even know if he can kill Five, who has been causing problems for them for two years now. Five, who doesn't want them running this city.

"Let's go," he says.

*

The whistle blows, and their rooms are unlocked. It's time for a mission.

Six doesn't like how the team runs, but he does deserve it. They all deserve it. One and Three deserve it for breaking the rules about touching. Now they spring apart as if they're been shocked by electricity if their arms even brush on a mission. But everyone is good now. They all come right home at the end of a mission and go right to their rooms. And Six goes to his tank in the basement.

He used to have a bedroom, but that was before the accident. Back when Four was alive. They aren't supposed to say anything bad about Four, because he's dead, but Six knows that One and Three are still angry at Four for telling on them.

Six doesn't mention Four at all. He's afraid that if he does, they'll all remind him that it's his fault. It was an accident, but it was his fault. He wanted to get too close, and now Four is gone.

Three has earned a lot of privileges over the years. Hargreeves lets her use her powers to improve herself if she wants. And if she keeps an eye on the others.

Two is the luckiest, Six sometimes thinks. Hargreeves doesn't pay as much attention to him because he's not as good as One, and he's not as powerful as the rest of them. That's how Six sometimes gets away with touching Two's hand. Only when they're out of the house, where there are no cameras.

Once in a while, Three sneaks a magazine into the house. She likes the ones about fashion, but once in a while she brings one with actual news. Six knows he's supposed to feel relieved when he sees the news that the four of them are keeping order in the city, but he remembers the fear in people's eyes and feels sick instead.

And lately, they're failing. Hargreeves is angrier and angrier that they haven't solved the problem with Five.

*

"This isn't going to work. They're not ready."

Vanya's voice comes out scratchy, and she doesn't look at Five when she says it. She shouldn't be arguing with him. He's done so much.

"They'll have to be," Five says, his voice clipped. Vanya is finally used to him, and her brain can understand the truth of how he looks--ten--and the truth that he's as old as Hargreeves.

_I don't know if I'm ready,_ Vanya thinks. She can't say it. It's so ungrateful. He got her out of the Academy, and so she should do anything for him.

"They're just kids," she says quietly. She doesn't remember what it's like to be just kids. They haven't been just kids since before Four died.

"They're the same age as the Academy. They're just green." Five looks so tired. Vanya wants to hold him, but the old instincts are only eighteen months gone, and she doesn't touch anyone.

*

Three sometimes wishes she could find Five without the others around and just explain to him what he's missing. Things at the Academy don't have to be bad, or even that hard. They're only hard if you break the rules. Six only has to sleep in his tank for his own good, and because he wasn't careful enough with Four. And Three...well, she's making a great come-back from the disaster with One. It was years ago, and she's earned back privileges. She can even look how she wants now.

And now, maybe in a perfect would they wouldn't be watched with cameras and robots, but this isn't a perfect world. Not yet.

But Five took Seven, and he has to pay for that.

*

Vanya is right. The others aren't ready. Five tracked them down and trained them, but they're not prepared for people who've trained like the Academy has trained.

Five could see how things were going at home when he took himself out of time. They were let out of their rooms less and less. They trained more. They were no kind of family. Grace was watching almost everything they did, and Pogo was watching the rest.

Pogo. Five is sorry about that, a little. But he had to make a point to the others. He had to show them that someone was standing up to them. He doesn't think they'll forgive him for that, or for his taking Vanya.

Vanya. She has a name. She deserves it.

If he could have saved the others, he would have, but they wouldn't come with him. He almost thought Two would, but at the last moment, One was there, in the way, giving orders. One, who Five and seen torture and kill people. He and Three are two of a kind that way, powerhouses with no hearts. Five remembers a time when they had hearts.

Five remembers a time when Six wasn't slavishly devoted to Hargreeves. Before he believed that Hargreeves was the only thing keeping him from being too dangerous to live. Before Four was ripped apart.

Five cleans his gun and readies himself. He doesn't want to kill others, but wanting has nothing to do with this. It's his duty to free the city from what they've warped it into.

If he thinks of his new team as tools and nothing else, he can almost feel confident. If he thinks of them as killers and nothing else, he can do this. If he doesn't, nobody will.


End file.
